Adding tags to Web articles in Content Station 9

Adding tags to Web articles in Content Station 9

When publishing an article to the Web, it is common to include tags (keywords) so that users can use these as a search tool for locating other articles with similar content.

When working on an article in Content Station, tags can be added in 2 ways:

By choosing from tags that are generated automatically based on the content of the story

By adding tags manually, optionally aided by an auto-complete feature or by choosing from a list of tags

Note: Because adding a tag is specific to articles that are published to the Web, adding a tag is done in a Publish Form for a Web Publication Channel (such as Drupal 7).

Automatically generated tags

Automatically generated tags are tags that are automatically generated by an external system which scans the content of the article that you are working on and suggests one or more tags that are relevant to that content. These tags are then sent back and displayed in Content Station next to the input field.

Example: For a story about tourism in Amsterdam, suggested tags might be "Amsterdam", "The Netherlands", "holiday", "travel", and so on.

Note: To make use of this feature the Enterprise Server to which you are logged in to needs a working Internet connection; Content Station itself does not need to be connected to the Internet for this feature to work though.

Figure: The field in a Publish Form for adding tags (A) and the suggested tags that are displayed next to it (B).

It is up to you as the person working on the article in the Publish Form to decide whether or not to add one or more of these tags to the article.

Generating the tags

To generate the suggested tags or update the ones that are shown, do one of the following:

Start typing in one of the article components and then stop typing for a brief period of time

Move the mouse pointer while it is positioned over the Publish Form

Scroll the Publish Form

Manually adding tags

Of course, tags can also be added manually. This can be done by entering the following types of tags:

Free-form tags. These are added by simply typing any word or combination of words.

Note: Although flexible, this method is open to spelling mistakes. Also, because no automation such as auto-complete is available (see below), each tag needs to be entered in full.

Free-form tags with auto-complete. This feature shows common or previously used tags while you are typing. As soon as a single character is entered, all available tags containing that character appear; the more characters you type, the more the available tags will be narrowed down.

Note: This method reduces the amount of typing that you have to do and prevents you from making spelling mistakes.

Figure: When entering a single character, all available tags containing that character appear (here: countries). The first position where that character appears in the tag is shown in bold.

Figure: When entering more characters, the available tags are narrowed down.

Example: When typing "Ams", the auto-complete feature might suggest "Amsterdam", "Amsterdam city", "Amsterdam airport", and so on. However, if a tag is already added, it does not appear again in the suggestions.

Note: The tags that appear as an auto-complete tag are based on a list that is stored in Enterprise. This list is dynamic and will grow over time because each time an article is published, any tags that were not in the list are added to it.

Fixed tags based on a pre-configured list. This is commonly used when the tag is part of a list of items.

Example: This list could be a list of products, a list of countries, and so on.

Note: This method makes sure that only those tags that are allowed are added and that these tags are always spelt the same way.

Adding and removing tags

A tag can be added by:

Clicking a suggested tag that is shown to the right of the input field

Starting to type in the input field and when the complete tag is typed, pressing Enter

Starting to type in the input field and when an auto-complete tag appears, selecting it and pressing Enter or clicking it with the mouse

Clicking "Add All" to add all suggested tags

A tag can be removed by:

Hovering over a tag and clicking the red icon that appears

Placing the text cursor to the right of the tag and pressing Return or Backspace

Clicking "Remove All" to remove all suggested tags

See these steps performed in this video:

Input fields and categories

Adding tags is done by category and for each category you can add one or more tags.

Example: Categories can be countries, cities, people, movies, companies, and so on.

As a result, a Publish Form will typically have multiple fields for adding keywords, each one used for entering tags about a specific category.

Figure: Multiple fields for adding keywords in a Publish Form: the Country field is linked to the Country category, the Continent field to the Continent category, and so on. For each of these fields, only tags that are related to that category are suggested.

Note: Although nothing stops you from manually entering a keyword that is totally unrelated to the category, in practice this would not make much sense.